Tag Archives: an author with children

As you will learn from reading this account, I was a perfectly horrible child in many respects and few stories reflect me in a poorer light than the one I am about to share. Sometimes the difference between genius and madness is failure. Other times, it’s a simple case of the idea being crap. This is the tale of an enquiring mind and a genuine desire to help turned bad. Very bad.

Gran-Gran, my dad’s mum, trained at the Royal Academy as a pianist. She used to play the piano at night when Dad and his brothers were frightened. The sound of Rachmaninov’s piano concerto drifting up from downstairs soothed him—still does. As a child, she, too was soothed by piano music drifting up from downstairs, but that was played by a friend of her parents; Chopin. I am ashamed at how little I remember of Gran-Gran, I know that at some point she had a nervous breakdown. After having a similar experience, but because of his Alzheimer’s rather than a breakdown, Dad told me how one morning Gran-Gran suddenly burst into tears at the breakfast table and couldn’t stop. He said it remains one of the most harrowing moments in his entire life. She went and lived in Bexhill for over six months with a companion. Then she was allowed to visit and finally, after over a year, I believe, she returned home.

When I was about eight or nine, I think, she got stomach cancer. Neither my brother nor I saw her for some time. Then she came to stay when she was officially recuperating from an operation to help it, although to be honest, I suspect it might have been classed as terminal by this time. She came to stay with us while ‘recovering’ I think to give Gin Gin, my grandfather, some respite from caring for her.

Before that point, I remember very little about Gran-Gran other than as a calm and benign presence—although I remembered more, then. She had dark hair—slate grey but it had been black, I think. She had a vein that stuck out a bit in the middle of her forehead, a joy which I have inherited, too. I can picture her sitting at the head of the dinner table in Byways, her and Gin Gin’s house, dishing out roast spuds and veg. She was a good cook, and I have the clock which hung on the wall beside her, a postman’s clock. Neither she, nor Gin Gin could ever persuade the number of dings, on the hour, to tie in with whatever number the hands were pointing to, at one point it even dinged thirteen times for one o’clock. I confess the dinger is in a chest, in pieces but I certainly intend to get it running at some point, although I’ll probably leave the bell side of it unwound. My husband and son did not grow up in a school so they are not able to sleep through anything quite the way I can.

What I do remember about Gran-Gran was that she was usually wearing the ghost of a smile and had a bit of a quiet twinkle around her eyes. She was also calm and lovely and clearly the glue holding everyone together.

However, after a two year absence being too ill to visit, when Gran-Gran came to stay with us, she didn’t seem to be the calm placid person that I remembered. Doubtless this was because she was ill, visually impaired and in a fair amount of pain but did that didn’t occur to young Einstein here? Oh no. Everyone else cottoned on but not me.

Gran-Gran’s blindness was caused by glaucoma. Everyone on both sides of my family has it. Basically, the blood pressure in your eyes gets too high for them and causes damage. There is no reversing this but if you get to it in time, it can be stopped. Gran-Gran would complain, often, that she couldn’t see although the evidence on many occasions suggested she could see a lot more than she thought—to my young eyes, at least. To be honest, I think it may have been less about not seeing and more about feeling a bit at sea, or perhaps it was a kind of shorthand complaint to sum up everything: that she was in pain and that she was, quite possibly, going to die of the disease she was fighting.

It must have been hard, staying with us; a draughty corridor-heavy house with a room at the top up about fifty stairs and the nearest bathroom down twenty six of them does not sound like an appealing place for an ill eighty year old. Unfamiliar surroundings, a strange and impenetrable heating and hot water system, a lavatory that would only flush if you pulled it just so … boys thundering around in adjacent rooms next door for most of the night, and the rats, of course, in the eves, behind the wall of our spare room, where she slept. The ones that scurried about above my bedroom. She must have heard those. And her Gin-Gin, my grandfather, who she loved, who tended to her at home, he wasn’t there—it was respite care, after all—and although she understood he needed a rest she must have felt very lost and lonely without him.

Now that I’m older, I realise she was pining for Gin-Gin and that she put up with a fair bit. But at the time it never occurred to me that our house was horrific by normal standards. Instead, I thought she complained a lot and I felt that was mean to Mum who was doing her utmost to make her stay with us as pleasurable and comfortable as possible. In my defence—though it isn’t much—I didn’t appreciate how ill she was. There were successes which I didn’t appreciate, too.

That stay, I believe, was the time when Mum discovered that Gran-Gran didn’t like burned toast but had it most breakfasts because one of her three sons, or Gin-Gin, my grandfather, would always burn and then spurn a slice of bread. Gran-Gran would eat it because she couldn’t bear to see it go to waste and eventually the myth was born that she liked her toast that way. At last, someone now realised that she didn’t like burned toast, after all. How happy she was to have a slice of normal toast that had not been purposely incinerated for her. She could have complained about the rats, too but she never once mentioned them, and she must have heard them. Mum and Dad were epic hosts, so doubtless she enjoyed the human part of the experience, or at least as much as she could through the trials of being ill and missing Gin-Gin. These are all things that were too subtle for me to see unless someone spelled them out in black and white, and that wasn’t the kind of thing you did in those days. All I could see was that Mum’s efforts seemed thankless and that Gran-Gran taking a great deal of my mother’s attention away from me and my brother. It was made worse by the fact that I was all at sea with this new grumpy Gran-Gran whom I felt I didn’t know. I wanted the old one back, without understanding that Gran-Gran no longer had the strength to be her.

With hindsight I know it was a difficult visit. Mum let slip just recently, that at the end of her life Gran-Gran kept bursting into tears, perhaps that was then. Perhaps that was the tension I picked up on. And of course, we had to respect Gran-Gran’s wishes at all times and they were wishes that weren’t always compatible with a lively eight and ten year old.

She would quite often ask Giles and I to keep the noise down or stop doing something or tell us we shouldn’t do something. We were told she wasn’t well and to keep out of the way so we did; as much as possible. That particular brief that was easier for Giles at boarding school than me at day school. She kept saying she couldn’t see but at the same time, it was amazing what she could see if it was a child licking a knife at the dinner table, playing corridor football or generally doing something they shouldn’t. She was not afraid to tell us off when Mum wasn’t around either which, we felt, was not her job. She would ask my Mum for help with certain things which we would then see her happily doing on her own when Mum was out of earshot or there was no-one adult around. What I now understand was her saving precious capacity and only using it when she had to, I thought was her blagging help to get attention when she didn’t need it. These days, I also understand that glaucoma comes and goes, so she would genuinely have had days where the light was more amenable and she was able to see way more than on others, and also, her reduced sight must have frustrated her terribly, but did I realise this then? Did I bollocks?

‘Mum, she can see,’ I said petulantly, one day while Gran-Gran was upstairs resting after a particularly difficult session. ‘She says she can’t but she can.’
‘No sweetheart, she can’t.’ My mum said.Poor fool! I thought. She’s being hoodwinked! I must show her the truth.

And that is when I hit on a plan to prove to Mum and Dad that Gran-Gran could see. A plan so simple, so elegant, that would be easy to carry out. A test of her visual skills that, I believed, I could implement without harming anyone. A plan with the straightforward logic, intelligence of concept and validity of results you might obtain with … say … the ducking stool.

Yeh.

When my brother came home from school, I explained my plan to him. He was now old enough to have a least the beginnings of an understanding of subtlety and nuance in the emotional landscape.

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea kiddo,’ was all he said.

I thought about it a bit, decided he was wrong, it was a great idea, so I did it, anyway.

Carefully, I tied piece of cotton across the bottom of the stairs, stretching from the iron banister one side to the leg of a small chest in which we kept the shoe cleaning kit the other. I made sure I did granny knots rather than reef knots because if my quarry didn’t see the cotton I wanted her to just walk on through it without noticing or being hurt. At the top of the stairs to the middle floor I did the same but I had to tape one end of the cotton to the wall.

Yes, I’m afraid you read that right, I set a trip wire for my eighty year old grandmother at the top of a flight of carpeted, but concrete underneath, stairs and genuinely thought that was OK.

The rationale was simple, as I’d explained to my brother, Gran-Gran would either not see the cotton, in which case, my crap knots would untie as she walked through it and all would be well. If she did see the cotton and complained about it it would prove that she could see.

Having tied the cotton in place Gran-Gran failed to surface within a few nanoseconds so I got bored of waiting, wandered off and forgot about it. Some hours later, I gather Gran-Gran did see it, proving, conclusively that she could see. Except that, looking back on it, what I suspect she proved was that my granny knots were a lot less likely to slip easily undone than I thought.

I remember little about the aftermath. Apart from Gran-Gran being very cross with me and Mum coming and finding me and telling me to go and untie every single trip wire I’d set AT ONCE! Gran-Gran left soon after. Unsurprisingly she didn’t come to stay again. I hope I apologised to her, but I can’t remember so the last words I actually recall having with my paternal grandmother were a robust defence of what she saw as a sustained effort to murder her, and what I saw as a service to the community—in proving that her blindness was selective and reinforcing my belief that it was done to attention-seek. I am so sorry Gran-Gran, if you’re somewhere up there reading this.

As I believe I mentioned, I really was a vile child.

Looking back at it now, I realise how black and white things are to you when you are small. I feel the same, inside, as I did then but I am not the same person. The subtleties of what adults say, as opposed to what they actually mean, are no longer quite so lost on me. True, I am incredibly socially lumpy but at least I do understand that now. I am more tuned-in to my inability to see the world the way normal people do. I am aware of the grey, even if I cannot always find it or sometimes find too much. And I guess it’s these kinds of horrific blunders that taught me to be a bit more circumspect about what I do and say, about blurting out my first emotional response to whatever has happened. To double think, I guess, before I act.

Interestingly, I don’t remember my parents being angry after my Mum’s initial stern instruction to remove all the cotton, but I do remember the feeling of overwhelming sadness emanating from them as they explained that yes, they knew Gran-Gran could often see more than she pretended but that she was old, and ill and part of love is being tolerant of a person’s foibles now, for the sake of who they really are inside, and would be, had they not a burden of pain (and in this case, terminal cancer) to carry. I think I apologised when my parents explained. I hope to heaven I did. Doubtless Dad had got an earful from her, too, but I was the one who deserved it.

Today, an experiment. This is a chunk of one of the many works in progress. This one allows me to write when my heart is too full of family stuff to do fictional things. Basically, it’s the folklore of my family, stories passed down, mostly by my Mum so far because they’re easiest to remember but I hope to get some more of my Dad’s, if not from him, then from my uncle. Some are about me and my brother, too. I thought it would make the blog fun but also, reading Dawn French’s biography, there might be some mileage in it as an ebook. If I can make it funny enough.

If …

The appeal is more in the characters involved than in what they actually did, I think, so a lot depends on how much I can bring their personalities out in what I write. At the moment, it tends to be just the bare bones of each story. The stories are officially true yet very possibly embroidered a little. Were we a tribe somewhere, these are the tales the shamen would tell. So this week, I thought I’d share a story about a hurricane we had in Britain. Here it is:

When I was at university, in 1987 there was a hurricane in Britain. They have happened on rare occasions and in this case the hurricane hit Sussex. Obviously, the trees and the houses of the Weald aren’t really designed to take this kind of punishment so there was a fair bit of damage both to houses and trees—half of Chanctonbury Ring disappeared and huge trees were blown down left right and centre, including one in my parents’ garden. Later the tree surgeon who came to fix it (a Mr Fish) said that on the morning of the hurricane it had taken him an hour and a half to drive five miles and he could only do that because he was driving a pick up with tree lifting equipment and a chainsaw in the back!

In the months afterwards, my Great Aunt, who had married a farmer, told me this story about one of the other farmer’s wives she knew.

The lady lived on a farm that had been in her husband’s family many hundreds of years and still occupied the original tudor famhouse. Like most of these, the house had a large chimney in the centre and the rooms were built around it so the chimney kept everything warm. As the winds began to rise, the lady decided that it was probably best to sleep downstairs so she got out a camp bed and bedded down next to the chimney in the central hall, which had the fewest windows. She reckoned it was also the most structurally strong part of the house and therefore the bit most likely to stay upright, and protect her, if the rest of it fell down. The power went off but she had a hurricane lamp and she sat and read for a while and then fell into a fitful sleep.

In the middle of the night she woke up, there was a massive bang and the sound of breaking glass. She guessed it came from the spare room, which was on the side of the house which was being most battered by the wind. She thought about going upstairs to investigate but decided that if the window had blown in there was little she could do other than get herself soaked for no reason and the door was closed, so the mess would be contained in the room, so she stayed put.
In the morning, she looked out of the window and could see bits of tree, garden furniture from the neighbouring farm and other detritus strewn about the lawn and farmyard. Taking her courage in both hands, she went upstairs to the spare room to see how bad the damage was. She opened the door and sure enough the window was smashed. However, the hole was a round hole and she surmised an object of some sort must have been blown through the glass. That’s when she took in the actual room and noticed what the object was. Standing implacably in the middle of the carpet, apparently unharmed, was a sheep.

What happened to the sheep? Well, believe it or not, it was fine. The lady discovered that it came from a field a couple of miles away and that it belonged to a nearby farmer. She had tracked him down and he’d come to fetch it by the end of the day—on foot, with a sheep dog I suspect since most roads were blocked with trees. It had been blown over two miles so it must have had a few stories to tell when it returned to its friends in the fold.

It’s Sean the sheep, it’s Sean the sheep … he even hangs around with those who … actually I’m not sure who he hangs out with to look like this. He was Meditarranean chicken.

As I write this, which, by the wonders of modern science happens to be last week, the weather here is very mixed. That’s right, like a cat confronted with a freshly opened door the sun round here doesn’t know whether it wants to be in or out. As a result it will raining and a bit chilly one minute be hot and steamy the next. Four seasons in one day. Although no snow, not yet anyway. But if you are missing winter you can always pretend you are in the southern hemisphere where they are enjoying it right now. Oh yes, it’s always winter somewhere. There’s a thought to contend with.

We are well are into the school holidays and I will be in Scotland when you read this, enjoying our first mini break of the holiday period with the McParents. McMini has finally had his birthday party and I even managed to produce one of my famous cake wrecks! In this case a football cake – he supports Man United – I suppose someone has to.

Now, all that remains is a quick session forcing him to write his thank you letters at gunpoint and we’re done.

Clearly, doing the Mum thing and holidays, the writing has slowed up – although there still seem to be a lot of ideas bubbling up for Space Dustmen, and obviously, The World’s Best Editor is doing her thang with the other stuff. The coming month also includes a holiday, which will be epic and involve lots of time to read. Hopefully I’ll have some recommendations for you towards the end of the month.

On other matters …

Authors cutting their own throats with 99c books!

Remember, a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that Bookbub featured one of my books?

Well, as I was sorting that out, I noticed that there was another excellent promo from Patty Jansen, sci-fi author and general all round good egg, a few days afterwards. As a result, Escape From B-Movie Hell is also in that with over 100 other books.

If you’re thinking of nabbing a copy of Escape and haven’t done so, it’s still 99p and it will be in Patty’s promo with a lot of very good other books, but only until 6th August. Then it will go back to its original price.

So there we are, for some really good stuff to read, make a note to put 5th and 6th August in your diary for the Winter giveaway. Yes. Winter because Patty’s in the Southern Hemisphere where everything’s backwards – or forwards, if I’m backwards up here in Blighty.

To grab yourself some 99c or p books click on the picture below …

Lastly, more McMini.

He may be nine but he already has way more natural authority than I do. The other day he was trying to explain the rules of some complicated game he wanted me to play with him, probably to do with something I find a bit turgid like Transformers or Power Rangers because I’d zoned out a bit. And as my mind wandered I suddenly realised he’d stopped talking. I looked at him and he was eyeing me with a very stern expression.

‘Mummy,’ he said.‘Mmm?’‘I’m waiting for you to listen. Are you going to do this properly or are you just going to mess around?’
‘Sorry.’
‘That’s better. If you’re not going to take this seriously we won’t play.’

He also does a short version where he looks at me and says,

‘I’m waiting …’

when he thinks I’m not paying attention. I asked him if this is what his teacher said to him.

‘Yes, it is actually.’‘Hmm d’you look out of the window regularly by any chance?’‘Well, yes,’ he admitted, and he did have the good grace to look sheepish at this point. ‘I do. Quite a lot.’

Clearly a chip off the old block then. I have told him I’ll try to be more attentive for the rest of the holidays and he says that next term, he’ll make a special effort to be more attentive in class – although I think he may be a lot better than that sounds.

Over the holidays I thought it would be fun to tell some of the funny stories about my family. There is ‘Catching Socks’, ‘Night of the Homeless Man’, ‘Tale of the Drowning Toddler’ and a famous one about my Mum for which I have no title, as yet.

However, I thought I would leave that for later because obviously, it being the holidays, I have been spending a lot of time with McMini and at the moment, he is in absolutely tip top form.

Indeed, he is greater evidence than anything else I’ve encountered that anyone who wants their mind expanding should skip the drugs and just talk to a kid.

McOther has his usual pre-holiday work panic on so after managing to clear the decks for sports day he had to miss the pic-nic lunch.

McOther’s reaction to this was to ask me if there was a source of mind expanding drugs McMini has access to about which we are unaware. But I think this is probably just how he is. I’ve never needed them, myself after all and McOther’s imagination is just as fertile so I guess it’s a given that McMini will come up with the kind of double dose that surprises even us.

Sometimes, McOther and I worry about what we have spawned …

Then this one…

Yesterday, I was happily minding my own business, reading the Searcher magazine on the loo when McMini appeared. It’s not so much you’ll never walk alone in our house so much as you’ll never cr- you get the picture, I’m sure. Anyway

‘I had a dream about you last night Mummy.’
‘Did you?’ I say. Uh-oh, I think. Dreams about me tend to involve my turning into some grisly monster and ripping his head off, dreams about his father, ditto.
‘Yes. It was quite scary, or at least it wasn’t exactly scary because it was funny but it was scary too. I dreamed I was in a kind of fairy tale. Cinderella was there but she had a black horrible face with red glowing eyes and she was dancing around and I accidentally went into her territory so she decided to kill me,’ – yep, her territory. I think we may have been letting him watch too many animal programmes – ‘But luckily you turned up, Mummy, and saved my life.’Well that’s a surprise. I thought. ‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘Still I’m glad I saved your life. Usually I kill you don’t I? so it makes for a nice change.’
‘Yes. But you nearly died. Cinderella had some zombie assistants, her ugly sisters were with her and they had crosses for eyes like when I draw dead people* and the Cinderella had a terrible secret weapon, she farted and that’s when you nearly died, the fumes nearly killed you but luckily I was there to save you by dragging you away.’

Have a kid and you, too, can have a loo like this!

When McMini plays video games, he doesn’t usually play the game that much, he spends hours dressing the characters in different clothes etc. He is clearly perfectly normal in this respect as the more recent the game the more secondary the actual game seems to be to all the extras, places you can go off menu, costumes you can unlock etc. But I found him playing Fifa 13 the other day.

‘Watch this Mummy!’ he said. Then as the goalie about to take a goal kick, he turned and put the ball in the back of the net. The game is not designed for people to do this so the Goalie then proceeded to put his head in his hands and look really upset. Which was kind of funny, in a surreal way.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘I’m being Chelsea. I don’t really like Chelsea so I have set myself up as Cheese McPiggyface, their player manager and I am making them lose so they are easier to beat next time.’
‘I’m not sure games work like that.’
‘Only one way to find out, Mummy.’

Hmm… well, I guess it’s cunning.

He also has a Ferrari driving game. To start racing you have to do some practise laps with Tiff Needell. McMini has never graduated to the actual racing bit. He drives the wrong way, backwards, into the wall and basically trashes the car.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked him.
‘I’m smashing the car. It’s hilarious! Look! I’ve cracked the windscreen.’
‘Why would you break a lovely Ferrari.’
‘Oh it’s much more fun than doing it properly, Mummy. Tiff Needell gets really cross.’

Ho hum … and don’t get me started on the weird stuff he puts in the freezer.

A lego figure in suspended animation. Our freezer is full of this stuff!

I dunno what’s going on here, more lego being iced along with a Kinder egg toy.

* And how The Beano draws dead things, too. Which is where he got it from I suspect.

You’d better be ready.

Yes, smashing things are afoot, in writing world anyway, and for once it’s not me blundering into something and breaking it.

Escape From B-Movie Hell.

Something unusual and rather wonderful has happened this week, my book, Escape From B-Movie Hell has been accepted for a bookbub promotion.

Now, I can imagine you might be thinking,

‘Mmm yes MT,’ as you stifle a yawn, ‘but what does that have to do with me?’

Well, Bookbub is the mother of all promotion sites. You get your book featured on there and many, many folks will discover it. A Bookbub feature is one of the Holy Grails of authordom. Any author angling to have their book included will need a LOT of persistence, possibly in conjunction with aligned stars, the fumes of potent upwind unicorn farts, and a dash of fairy dust. But while the unicorns and fairies and proper authors were looking the other way it seems my book sneaked on!

What does this mean for you?

Well, if you want to read Escape From B-Movie Hell, then from sometime yesterday, 20th July, until Sunday, 23rd July, it’s going for a song.

Bookbub will be promoting my book to squazillions of people in India, Canada, Australia and the UK. And in return I reduce it to 99c, or p, or 65Rupees.

Now the squazillions don’t include anyone in the US, or RSA or New Zealand, which seemed unfair. So I’ve reduced it to the equivalent price in those places, too.

So there you go, if you are interested in reading it, click this link for more info and links to buy:

There’s another thing I’d like to share with you. Today, I bring you a new word: the verb, ‘to bald’. McMini uses a lot of wonderfully bizarre language and this is one he came up with when I was talking to him the other today. He was talking about pretending to be a certain footballer, a fellow with a shiny round billiard ball of a head. No hair.

The thing that made me laugh most was that I knew exactly what he meant straight away.

So there we are. If you have a LOT of hair, and you then sweep it back off back of your face and flatten it against your head, roll-on deodorant style, so that you can pretend you have no hair at all and show your giant forehead to the world, the technical term for your action is, apparently, ‘balding yourself’.

Eyebombing: the art of spreading googly joy

Saddled as we are with a thoroughly grim world landscape right now I thought everyone could do with a bit of cheering up. So it occurred to me that it would be fun to start a group about one of my favourite hobbies, eyebombing, possibly with a view to doing a book later on … if it goes well.

Eyebombing is the art, if that’s the right word, of adding googly eyes to inanimate objects to give them a personality. When I write, I love putting obscure jokes in my books; things that only a handful of people will get. Eyebombing has that exact same appeal. If I stick googly eyes on something, odds are only about one in ten people will see it. It’s a secret joke between a tiny and exclusive club of eagle-eyed, uber-noticing folks.

And it’s a little bit naughty …

and I’m not meant to …

and yet, it’s mostly harmless.

And it’s a lot more interesting than running through wheat fields! (Sorry, bit of British political humour there, although, to give her her due, running through wheat is a lot more outrageous than it sounds, she’d have got a proper bollocking from the farmer if he’d caught her.)

Eyebombing is something I’ve been doing since before McMini was born. Over the years I have built up a sizeable library of photographs. Looking at them with a couple of friends, the other day, they said, ‘why on earth don’t you do a book about this?’

So the long term project will, indeed, be to produce a book on eyebombing. But it will be a long ride because this is something that only, really, works in print, and as a result, it means that not only will it be a more expensive sell but I’ll also have to try and flog it to book shops and funny only sells there at Christmas which means I’ll have to work on the book all this year, get it ready to promote next spring – because book stores choose their Christmas funny in about March. Then I will launch it, officially, in October 2018.

To fund stock, editing and design I am toying with the idea of a crowdfunding campaign. If I do that, I can give backers their copy this year, a whole year before release, and sell any left over pre release copies at the Bury Christmas Fayre – if I get a stall this year – or keep them until next year.

Royal Mail being what it is, the postage outside the UK will probably cost slightly more than the book and the crowdfunding thing may not work. So I may have to get a ‘proper’ publisher. However, for now I’m setting up a group to share pictures, both mine and I’m hoping other folks will post their eyebombs too. It’s just something I thought I’d do and if it adds ‘social proof’ to applications to publishers, or my efforts to sell the book to bookshops, jolly dee. Going forward, if I do have to mount a crowdfunding campaign, am hoping folks in the group will share the link as much as possible.

If you want to follow the fun …

If any of these kinds of japes appeal to you, and you think eyebombing would amuse you, I’d be delighted if you joined me.

To follow the development of the book, not to mention any eyebombing activities undertaken, there are three ways you can keep up with it all online.

If you want to join in …

If you already have a packet of googly eyes burning a hole in your pocket are welcome to join in; posting your own photos, chatting about eyebombing and generally shooting the breeze on the very nascent – I formed it just a couple of weeks ago – EyebombThereforeIam facebook group. You can find that here:

Jeez, well, this week’s been interesting. Welcome to what the lovely Dame Edna Everage would call, ‘my gorgeous life’ in all it’s technicolour glory! (Phnark.)

So, this week McMini had pukka actual gastroenteritis. He started feeling ill, was sick a lot, and then he was sick a bit more and then, just for a change he was sick again.

Then he was hungry so I gave him some toast.

Which he sicked up.

Rinse.

Repeat.

On Tuesday he was so lethargic and ill that I left him to sleep, sat in the next room and wrote 3,000 words! Yeh, a week and a half’s quota in 3 hours. That’s a seriously ill small fry. I thought it would pass though and he hadn’t thrown up … until 3pm.

Tuesday afternoon, he started being sick again.

‘Hmmm,’ I thought.

McMini is lively, and alert, and … well let’s just say there are a lot of donkeys around here with no hind legs and it wasn’t me who talked all of them off. He is full of beans and a chatterbox even when he’s ill. But he wasn’t, which was a bit of a worry.

Early on Wednesday, finally, we got the lovely green sick.

‘Ah.’ I thought.

I don’t think he feels very well …

He was getting incredibly lethargic now and with the green sick and him beginning to hurl more often again I was wondering about appendicitis, or dehydration – except the … er hem … wee colour was fine – or low blood sugar levels – snortle I nearly typed blud sugar there … you’re sugar’s low blud! Thanks dude – sorry, where was I yeh, with a sick McMini.

Clearly the time had come to take my little boy to the Docs. I checked his wee colour again and it was ‘silver’ as he called it – to the rest of the world that’s normal green. So I convinced myself that something worse was definitely going wrong. Because I am not a helicopter mum or anything. Mwah hahahrgh! But I was thinking blood sugar. So I took him down to the Doctor’s for their not quite emergency oops-you-haven’t-got-an-appointment-but-we-appreciate-it’s-serious-so-if-you-come-and-wait-at-11.30-a-doctor-will-see-you clinic. Snappy title huh?

Long and short, we ended up on Rainbow Ward at the West Suffolk with suspected appendicitis for evaluation, hello LOVELY people on Rainbow Ward. Yes, they genuinely rock.

The first thing they gave him was anti-sickness drugs.

McMini didn’t like the flavour. He made a face.

‘This is disgusting!’ he whispered, because he still felt to sick to talk. ‘Persevere, you need this,’ I told him. ‘Take it in tiny bits.’
‘OK,’ he whispered .

I don’t like it.

The nurse went off to get a glass of black current with the kinds of salts and sugars in it that people who haven’t eaten anything for four days are likely to need. When she came back he’d eaten all but a tiny bit of the dose of anti sickness. He had a 20ml dose of the fluid with the sugars in and took the last of the anti sickness with it. Suddenly, he was talking. Loudly.

‘How can you give me this stuff?’ he asked her. ‘You do know it’s disgusting don’t you? Seriously, it’s completely vile.’
‘Well it’s clearly made you feel better.’ I told him.
‘Yes but seriously Mummy. It’s revolting! It’s like that stuff you give me when I have a cough’ [medised] he turned to the nurse. ‘You’ve probably traumatised me for life! You know that don’t you?’
‘That’s not the way to go on mate,’ I told him. ‘Sorry,’ I added, to the nurse, as I cringed with embarrassment, ‘my son is a fussy little bleeder and he’s a bit of a thespian, to boot.’
‘It is vile though!’ he said clearly to get a laugh but I was extremely worried she wouldn’t realise and might take it the wrong way. Luckily she didn’t. She just said,
‘You feel better, though, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he said and then, beaming, added, ‘I can talk now, I felt so sick before, I could only whisper.’

We saw a student doctor first and while he examined us and asked questions, I had to feed McMini 20ml of salts and fluids every 10 minutes. Two doses and McMini was firing on all cylinders again with added exuberance at feeling if not well then, a sod of a lot better than before. The Doctor was a lovely chap who laughed at McMini’s jokes and waited patiently while he answered yes or no questions with lengthy anecdotes and stories (can’t think where he gets that from). Then he got the non student doc he’d been shadowing in to see us. She was also lovely, telling us she was in hulk mode today (her top was green). We were probably quite lucky they had senses of humour as he did the whole ‘I’m traumatised for life’ routine again with them.

McMini has now served his 48hour purdah and I have unleashed him on the world again. Joyously, while I thought I was going down with it too, it may be that I just had an IBS attack. I love you Buscopan. Althogh McOther, ringing from Lisbon, had to hang up for a few minutes to hurl. Although he came back a lot perkier and thinks he might have sunstroke.

While I was telling to one of the lovely ladies who cleans our house about what McMini had said told me her daughter gave the nurse the bird when she had her polio injection. She was very good, didn’t cry but then as they got the door, her daughter upped her middle finger at the nurse and said venomously, ‘I hate you!’ She said she’d never been so mortified in her life and was wondering where the hell she picked it up. I told her about the time McMini got done for saying ‘Bollocks!’ at school and when they asked where he got it from McMini said, ‘Mummy.’ Jeez. Kids!

On the upside, on Wednesday morning, just before we went to the Doctors, ill feeble McMini said,

‘Sorry Mummy, I don’t mean to treat you like staff. I just feel so sick and ill it’s really hard to move.’ Which seemed surprisingly emotionally mature.

Then Friday morning, probably about the time McOther’s plane was taking off to fly him to Lisbon for the weekend, the phone rang. Mum’s carer. Mum had a ripping headache and thought she might be having a stroke. We had a chat about it. I did the whole fact thing with the carer and then I spoke to Mum. Mum does have ministrokes, and according to scans the bleeds are where her head was hurting, but her speech centre has always been the bit that goes first, so far.

So the carer and I discussed it a bit and decided that since we both know Mum hates hospital, rather than ring 999 and have her whisked in where she’d sit in a ward all weekend waiting to be evaluated when the non emergency staff came back to work on Monday, we would start by seeing if a local GP would come out to her.

Up side of that is that it’s probably not a stroke, Mum won’t have to go to hospital. But she might be sickening for something. On the down side, Dad has really sore feet and when the Doctor looked at those the news was not so good. She reckoned this was down to blood flow and that he probably has a blocked artery somewhere in his upper leg. She said they’d operate in a younger person but the risk would be too high to Dad. They treat this with blood thinners in the elderly and as he’s on those, anyway, there’s not much more to be done. So a bit of a worry about Dad but no mercy dash required which is, frankly, a bit of a … well … mercy.

So, after a week like that – spot the really unsubtle segue – I could do with some funny books to read, as you can imagine. So it’s just as well because there is a funny book giveaway going on. Mine is included, of course, along with a whole heap of others – 24 – from all sorts of different genres. These are all Instafreebie books so you are asked to sign up to the author’s mailing list so they can send it to you, but you can always unsubscribe and if you feel like a bit of levity in your life, this one is worth a go! It’s running until Midnight on Sunday 21st May which is probably midnight somewhere in America. And apologies for only posting this now. I meant to do it this morning but at least you have a day to fill your boots and some may still be available for a day or two afterwards.

Anyway, I hope you find some interesting books to read and I hope next week will be quieter or at least, a little less action packed. If you’d like to check out the books the link for the giveaway is here:

K’Barthan Trilogy on Amazon UK

Few Are Chosen in paperback (click image):
Kindle version:Few Are Chosen (The K'Barthan Trilogy)
The Wrong Stuff in paperback (click image):
Kindle version:
The Wrong Stuff, K'Barthan Trilogy: Part 2
A Splendid Salmagundi, contains a short and a poem from me, and some cracking stuff from some other, distinguished authors who you may even have heard of...
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Few Are Chosen, K'Barthan Trilogy: No 1 has been awared the Awesome Indies Seal of Approval

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A group of London teenagers judging the Wishing Shelf Book Awards awarded a silver award to Few Are Chosen, K'Barthan Trilogy: Part 1. Escape From B-Movie Hell was also voted a winner - of a bronze medal this time - in 2015.